11 april 2021
19:57
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The American technology giant Microsoft has put nearly 20 billion dollars on the table for the specialized speech technology company Nuance Communications. It also houses the remains of Lernout & Hauspie.
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The American tech giant Microsoft is on a takeover hunt. Bloomberg reported this on Sunday evening. “Microsoft is in advanced negotiations to acquire Nuance Communications, a company specializing in artificial intelligence and speech technology,” the US news agency learned. “The deal could be closed during the week.”
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According to Bloomberg, Microsoft would have up to $ 16 billion at the disposal of the company that laid the foundations for the technology used in Siri, the virtual assistant for Apple’s operating systems.
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Nuance Communications also houses the remnants of Lernout & Hauspie. The speech technology division of that bankrupt company was taken over by the American Scancoft, which was later transformed into Nuance Communications.
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Takeover hunger
“The talks are ongoing, but it cannot be ruled out that they will end in failure,” said the sources that Bloomberg consulted. Microsoft did not want to respond to the messages on Sunday. No one was available at Nuance.
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If negotiations with Nuance succeed, the AI specialist will become Microsoft’s second most expensive purchase.
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Microsoft, which has a market value of more than $ 1,930 billion, is hungry for takeover. Last month it was announced that the giant is in talks about the takeover of the chat platform Discord. The company wants to put more than 10 billion dollars on the table for this. It previously bought video game producer Zenimax Media for $ 7.5 billion in cash.
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If negotiations with Nuance succeed, the AI specialist will become Microsoft’s second most expensive purchase. Only the acquisition of LinkedIn was more expensive. That 2016 transaction came at a price of $ 24 billion.
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Microsoft and Nuance are no strangers to each other. Since 2019, they have been collaborating on technology that allows doctors to record conversations with patients during consultations to later enter that data into electronic health records.
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